Still sticking with High Bar Squats…deeeeeep…here is an example:

We do 5 sets of 3 reps at the top weight. Well, me and Courtney Stanley do that, the rest move on to leg extensions after 1 set at their top weight…that should get them a lot stronger. After squats we hit heavy hack squats, then still-leg deadlifts for the hamstrings. We finish Sunday’s with heavy bicep work.

My bodyweight is down to 212 today, finally hitting a drop spurt after hanging at 216 for the last few weeks. Besides eating better, I have been taking my youngest son, Max, on long walks of 2 miles or more through the woods on trails that are up and down hills…great for both of us.

Another minute or two between updates. Good news is that no training has been missed. Actually everything was jumping ahead of schedule due to my greediness, so I backed off the weights and re-cycled. My last heavy bench workout I worked up to 352 for a triple, then backed it down last week to 319. On squats, we backed it down quite a bit. We switched to high bar, deeeeeeeep (rock bottom) squats. Talk about sore! I will do these for a couple of more weeks, then go back to heavy rack squats on Sunday’s and put the high bars on with my deadlift days. Speaking of deadlifts, we are still rotating Romanian deads with regular deeds, and I feel healthier doing it this way.

Good training today. Felt strong on all lifts today. I worked up to 341 for an easy triple on the bench, worked with 80’s on db inclines, and used 80 pounds on dips today for 8 reps.

Keeping this short and sweet. Worked up to an easy triple with 330, pausing the last rep. Overall a good workout. Hit 8 reps with 70 lb.. on dips, no shoulder pain. Pushing Courtney harder than he wants to work, he keeps using every excuse in the world not to increase his work load, and sometimes we have had to ridicule him into the work. He still has not finished a workout with us. Timbo is not really pushing himself either, and since they have been training together, it’s easy to see why they struggled at the end of their training cycle for the nationals. You have to push yourself so that body can adapt and overcome. Every injury they have been complaining about I have had as well. Rotator Cuff, elbow, kidney stone, hell, I have even pulled my hamstring twice in the last 12 weeks, but kept it to myself and kept plugging away at it. Add in the track work that has been keeping my legs fatigued all week. In order to get back to where I was, I have to get back to what I was doing to be successful, and we are still not at the total workload we used to handle.

Squat day. I showed up a little early so that I could get stretched and warmed up before the others were ready. This way I could do heavy rack squats, and by the time they were ready, I could start high bar squats with them. I took my high bars as deep as I could, and evidence of this was the fact that I ripped out the ass of my shorts on my 2nd set. From that set on I just kept trying to get deeper so that I could hear them rip more and more. After squats we did some 1 legged squats. Talk about a burn. I haven’t do e these before, but I think we will be doing these instead of leg extensions.

Back up to 319 x 5 reps today. Easy, but I was aching more than usual in the left elbow and shoulder, plus for some reason hurting at the insertion point of the upper right bicep. Might be the weighted dips stretching that area. Since I love dips so much, rather than cut them out I just cut out the extra weight this week. Bodyweight holding at 214. No drastic drop in weight. Skipped running yesterday, but we’ll be back at it tomorrow morning.

Good day of training. Finally started training with over 400 on the deadlift. Hit 407 for an easy double. I remember when I did that for 10 reps back in the day. Oh well, it’s coming back.

Wow! Long time no update, huh? Well, things haven’t been too bad. Feeling strong on everything and my cardio is getting better as well. On the bench press I hit an easy 319 for 5 reps friday before last, then backed it down last week to 297 to recycle. Still doing rack squats, hitting 407 for 5 2 weeks in a row, then dropping down last week to do some full range Hatfield squats.

We are still hitting the track for 2 miles on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. However yesterday I went to the gym instead and hit 30 minutes on the treadmill and then 30 minutes on the bike. My bodyweight has been fluctuating between 215 and 219, so that has been a sticking point for me, but this past 7 days or so I have been dropping again, and I’m refocused on hitting 200.

Deadlifts are up tomorrow. I’ll see about putting some videos back up this week, at least of my deads and bench.

After having to skip last weeks bench workout because of the infamous kidney boulder, I wasn’t sure how my benches were going to go this week. I had planned on sticking with last weeks planned weight of 297, but my warm-ups were so light I went with 308, which would have been my weight anyway if I had worked out last week. As you can see in the vid, it was ridiculously easy, and I believe I am back to 100% on the shoulder. I’ll move it up to 319 next week, and then depending on how easy it is I’ll either recycle back to 308 or move it up the next week.  The rest of my workout was stronger than usual. Everything I usually do for 8-10 reps I was instead knocking out 12-15 reps. I think my body is finally adjusting to the increased work load, as well as the track work that we are doing on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. I’ve been staying pretty lean on the diet, and have also started doing shots of lemon juice for the kidney stone issue (thanks Laura, I think).

If you follow my tweets or facebook posts then you know what happened to me Friday morning. Around 3:00 in the morning a slight ache in my left side woke me up. It quickly escalted to the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. It literally brought me to my knees. My wife, Alisha, wanted to call the ambulance, but I didn’t want to wait that long, so I practically crawled to the car. At this point I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me, just that it felt like my body was shutting down. I was paralyzed with the pain. When we finally got to the hospital, with my wife driving through town like a bat out of he’ll and me writhing in pain in the back seat, she ran in to tell them that her husband was in severe pain and that I was too big to get out of the car by herself. They came out, decided to try to get me out on the side where my feet were, and then seemed to scratch their heads on how to do that. I had already opened the door on the other side, so I said heck with it and crawled out of that side. They rushed around to me and finally got me into the wheelchair. Once inside I got a look at the two who had my life in their hands. A security guard and a male nurse. The guard had us stop at the self check-in station and started asking me questions while Alisha parked the car. I could barely open my mouth, and this idiot was trying to figure out the computer. “gee, something’s wrong. It won’t enter the info. I wonder if the system is down.” Tweedledee and Tweedledum seemed to lose interest in me and focused more on the computer. At this point the f-bombs started to fly. My opening salvo started with “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?” and I believe also included something about “fuckety fuck fuckin fuckers”. This is when the othersecurity guard and more nurses started wandering over to ou area, and the decision was made to take me to where they could get my vitals and then check me in later. Good decision. Until the nurse from he’ll came in to draw blood. Somebody had already pissed in her cheerios and she decided to take it out on me. She took out a needle that looked like you could shoot a basketball through it and told me lie flat. No. I wasn’t moving. I was still paralyzed. She kept trying to twist and push me back, but I was too stubborn and too big. She finally rammed the needle in my left arm, the only one available to her. In an pissed off tone, she announced that no blood was coming out, that she stuck me perfectly and nothing was happening. She then takes a small pitcher and hangs it on the fingers of my right hand, which was attached to my right arm and tucked underneath me, and tells me I have to give a urine sample before the Doc will see me or give me meds. I let the pitcher hang there for a few seconds, then said “I can’t move, F NO!” and let it fall to the floor, where she just looked at it and then walked out. Alisha told them that I had a very high pain tolerance, and for me to be reacting this way meant that something was very wrong, and they should give me something quickly. More f-bombs were flying through the air, and I believe I scored a few direct hits, because a Doctor that seemed to be just walking by stuck his head in the door and said “give that man some Dilaudid, he’s in severe pain!”. Thanks Doc. Well, that wasn’t immediate, so I waited in agony while several nurses tried to get me set up. Finally the Dilaudid arrived, and I watched the male nude shoot two syringes into my IV. I felt the drug wash over me, a weird sensation. The pain was gone almost instantly, and I could finally lay flat on my back and relax. That is some kind of great shit, I’m telling you. No pain, nada. An hour later I passed a stone the size of a sesame seed, and I couldn’t believe that something so small could take me down so hard. They let me go at 5:45am, so the whole thing last less than three hours, but that was the longest time of my life. The doc said that more will follow, so I am going to work on my cussing, just to mix it up. I don’t want them expect the same old thing out of me every time I hit the er.